|
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter
March
7, 2005
Re: NW
SAN PEDRO NC RFQ. PLANNING DIRECTOR APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED.
FAQ SECTION TO BE IMPROVED.
NW SAN PEDRO
NC RFQ
The Northwest
San Pedro Neighborhood Council has released a Request for Qualifications
to find a consultant(s) to develop a community-driven conceptual
land use and traffic plan for properties bordering on a one-mile
stretch of North Gaffey Street.
The four-page
RFQ will be available on our home page later today. If you know
of anyone who might be interested, the deadline to submit a response
is March 21. There is more information on their website at www.nwsanpedro.org.
PLANNING DIRECTOR
APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED
The deadline
for submitting an application to be the new City Planning Director
was extended to March 18. To see more click
here and be taken to the Personnel Department’s home
page, Executive Job Opportunities section.
FAQ SECTION
TO BE IMPROVED
Right now, the
FAQ section of our website contains legal questions. There is a
separate FAQ in the Funding section. But we’re working on expanding
the FAQ to include non-legal questions. We’ve got tons of them,
but the one that keeps coming up most frequently involves whether
or not Neighborhood Councils can have formal votes on City matters,
such as on planning and land use matters.
The answer is
no … at least not without changing the City Charter and complying
with the federal Voting Rights Act. And doing so would end the current
concept of Neighborhood Councils. This was discussed thoroughly
during the Charter reform commission hearings, and many of those
reports are on our website.
The two most
important parts of the Charter are the ones that say that Neighborhood
Councils shall be advisory, and not have any formal decision-making
power, and that Neighborhood Councils may determine their own boundaries
and their own method of selecting their leaders.
If Neighborhood
Councils were given, say the first vote on land use matters, the
federal Voting Rights Act would eliminate all the methods through
which Neighborhood Councils current select or elect their board
members, and boundaries would likely have to be changed to ensure
compliance with federal law regarding equal population and the effect
of boundaries on minority voting power.
What was talked
about during the Charter reform process was the possibility of creating
a change through which locally-elected people would be able to vote
on certain matters from inside the system, but that the Neighborhood
Councils would exist as “public lobbyists” to hold accountable
all of the full-time and part-time politicians.
And another
issue that came up at the time, was that in planning and land use
matters, state law requires that for the most part, a city planning
commission or a City Council must have the final say, so those local
front-end votes could be vetoed.
In short, Neighborhood
Councils could not have a formal vote inside the system as long
as they continue to elect themselves as they are doing now. All
of the protections of the Voting Rights Act would apply.
Feel free to
send in your other questions, and we’ll begin loading up the
FAQ.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Greg Nelson
gnelson@mailbox.lacity.org
866 / LA HELPS
213 / 485-1360
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org
email
www.lacityneighborhoods.com
website
|
